Vietnamese council cleared in hurricane-relief inquiry

April 17, 2013

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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File photo of Van Thanh Tran, who heads the Vietnamese Interfaith Council in America. STEVEN GEORGES, FOR THE REGISTER

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File photo: Attorney K. Luan Tran rises up from his seat after he lost his bid last February to seek an injunction in O.C. Superior Court to force the Tet Parade organizers in Little Saigon to include a gay and lesbian group. KEVIN LARA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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File photo of Nghia Xuan Nguyen, also known as Neil Nguyen, during a protest in 2009. ROD VEAL, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

WESTMINSTER – Organizers of a fundraising drive for Hurricane Sandy victims have been cleared of any wrongdoing, police said Wednesday.

Police and the Orange County District Attorney's Office found no criminal violations, police Cmdr. Dan Schoonmaker said in an email Wednesday.

"This includes a thorough review of the Vietnamese Interfaith council bank account through Wells Fargo," Schoonmaker said of the Vietnamese Interfaith Council in America, which spearheaded the hurricane fundraising.

Authorities looked into how two checks totaling $27,000 written out to a New York relief fund had been accidentally deposited into a Westminster bank. The money was later returned to the Chua Bao Quang temple in Santa Ana, and the temple forwarded the money to the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City, which is raising and distributing funds to aid Hurricane Sandy victims.

The subject was raised during a lengthy news conference late Tuesday at the offices of the Vietnamese American Federation of Southern California, which is also the law office of Neil Nguyen, a leader in both the federation and the interfaith council.

Nguyen, also known as Nghia Xuan Nguyen, said police inquiries into the accounting of the charity funds led New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office to initially decline a donation that topped $150,000. But a Vietnamese organization in New York, he said, vouched for the Orange County group and members traveled east in April for a ceremonial check presentation.

In other matters, Nguyen also discussed a different recent controversy: the Little Saigon Tet parade.

The city last month asked organizers for $18,000 to cover attorney fees that Westminster officials said were incurred after parade organizers barred a gay and lesbian group from participating in the event. The $18,000 has since been reduced to $9,797.71 in attorney bills from Feb. 4 through Feb. 10.

On Tuesday, Nguyen said the amount was unreasonable and his group would not pay it.

"We don't feel we owe them anything," Nguyen said.

The Vietnamese American Federation of Southern California, which organized the parade, barred the Partnership of Viet Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Organizations from participating. The LGBT members took the organizers to court but lost. Afterward, they continued negotiating with city officials in hopes of including a nondiscrimination clause to the city's law relating to special events or creating a new board to govern future Tet parades.

The city attorney concluded last month that Westminster cannot force parade organizers to include lesbians and gays. There would be no new non-discrimination clause or new board.

That announcement came with an admonition that the city encourages the organizers to include the LGBT group in future events.

And because the city was dragged into the legal imbroglio this year, Westminster officials said they planned to bill the federation for Westminster's attorney fees.

But Westminster was never named in the lawsuit, so the clause in the contract that agrees to hold the city harmless in the event of litigation does not apply, Nguyen said Tuesday.

In a letter to the city, attorneys for the federation said it took them "all of five minutes" to find the key applicable case for the court case.

"We had fees considerably less than $18,000 and we actually wrote papers and appeared in court," said attorneys Mark Rosen, a former Garden Grove councilman, and Dina Nguyen, a current Garden Grove councilwoman.

"Our client wants to work toward a solution to next year, which will be better accomplished if the city does not try to seek its pound of flesh from our client's limited resources," Rosen and Nguyen wrote in an April 10 letter to City Attorney Richard Jones.

Jones said Wednesday he did not know whether this latest turn would impact future Tet parades in the city. "We just wanted that dialogue. They have decided to say they will not be cooperative," Jones said.

Diana Dobbert, the city's community services and recreation director, said the organizers will forfeit a $1,635 reimbursement from the $60,000 they paid to cover police and other expenses for the day of the parade.

Organizers said Tuesday that they spent a total of $127,370 on the parade and have approximately $20,000 left over for a future event.

Meanwhile, the leader of a second organization that signed the special event permit said he will meet with city officials. Nguyen Phuc Hung of the South Vietnamese Marines Veteran Charities Association emphasized he wants to keep "a good relationship" with the city.

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